Anniversary of an Anniversary of Chernobyl: Finding Mutual Incentives
Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 3:41PM 
"Find Mutual Incentives," or "Trump with a Grill", 11x14 in, acrylic on canvas; "Dan Savage says, open communication is key to any healthy relationship," 11x14 in, acrylic on canvas, 2011
Today is the anniversary of my show at KGB Bar for Chernobyl's 25th birthday. Propaglasnost! The Transparency Projects attracted a full room for the exhibit opening and reading, where a series of propaganda paintings promoting the demand of political transparency and citizen participation in active democracy hung, and I hosted an evening where SovJew historian Gal Beckerman (When They Come For Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle To Save Soviet Jewry) and New Orleans writer Zach George read from their works on the individual citizen's experience in macro-systemwide shifts.
The iconic cultural venue that began as a socialist meeting place before one of the dudes' sons, Denis Woychuk, evolved the bar into a beacon of the arts in its uses as bar, theater, gallery, and now critically-acclaimed literary venue hosting readings daily. Woychuk, a sort of Minister of Culture of the East Village in his many forms as KGB owner, playwright, children's book author, and artist, had vision enough to bring back the gallery part of Kraine Gallery Bar for . But since its original use over twenty years ago, the gallery space had been converted to a theater, where at some point Amy Poehler really made her debut along with the Upright Citizens Brigade. Instead, Propaglasnost exhibited for over two months in the new gallery still running strong as a curated space, found easily at the top of the stairs to the left of the barroom.
A year later and reminiscing, I guess the deduction is that regardless of what shit the universe will throw at us, we as civilized folks are smaller than the Man in charge. But ladies, if you've ever thought to yourself that you cannot change your man, you may not be thinking creatively enough. Acting out of love in all relationships, from sexual to political, means dicotomously pursuing what you need and want while selflessly giving the greatest amount of good that you can afford to the other. The mantra that I as an American hold true, and believe the Consitution's scribes to have believed is: individuals will always pursue happiness and systems will prioritize their own pursuit of efficient and overarching power above all else, if only for the sake of survival (of the fittest). The trick is finding mutual incentives between the two to ensure that people are able to freely and productively chase their dreams, and systems can progress toward their own (democratically agreed-upon) goals, all with respect of and without burden on eachother's pursuits. It's beautiful: complete equilibrium in power, which could read as utopic daydreaming, but I think is more an assignment for the latest cohort of creative innovators in all fields, from the arts to politics.
So can you change the Man? If there really are good intentions in the relationship (without which, why are you together/ not flying the coup or initiating in coup d'etat?), finding mutual incentives that not only benefit you, but genuinely do good for the other tends to result in lasting alterations. The first step is opening your mouth, because if you don't say (or even know) what the hell it is you even want (really want?), who will? And who could blame the farting man for continuing to shit on your parade if you're not getting pissed about it?
